Play Dead (21 page)
“So does this place have its own reality?” I asked. “Does it continue merrily along when nobody’s visiting, or does it only wink into existence when someone is in it?”
I realized that was the kind of question Eli would have asked. Not that I wasn’t interested, but in practical terms it made no difference. And the answer was always the same, anyway. It is and it isn’t. It depends on your definition of reality, and so on.
“Never mind,” I said. “So why are we here, then? What are you looking for?”
Jackie leaned in toward me. “The book we’ve been using? Richter’s book?”
“What about it?”
“It’s only volume one.”
“That implies a volume two.”
“Yes. The second book is more advanced—there’s enough information in it to change the world. At least the practitioner world. Richter was a brilliant man, but an odd duck and a paranoid. He was terrified the book would fall into the wrong hands and all his hard-earned knowledge would be appropriated by others.”
“And by other hands he meant any hands but his own,” Malcolm added. “But he couldn’t bear to destroy the book, and besides, he needed it himself from time to time. So he found this place, or created it, and hid the book here.”
“And now you want it.”
“Of course. It’s absolutely vital.”
“Now we come to the crux of the matter,” I said. I put down my coffee and leaned forward. “Vital for what?” Malcolm got a faraway look for a moment, then refocused.
“Well, in general, the knowledge in it is priceless,” he said. Jackie interrupted, eyes bright and shining.
“With this book we can create a singularity that will make this one seem like a poorly constructed theme park. In effect, not a singularity at all. We can create a perfect world and move there—along with the brightest and best, the elite, the creative—not just practitioners, but everyone, everyone worthwhile. We can leave behind the pollution and crime and hatred that are destroying our own world, along with those who are responsible. Let them stew in the filth they’ve made. We’ll be gone. We can make a fresh start.”
“Sounds almost like the Rapture,” I said. “But why didn’t you just tell me about this? Why all the mystery?”
Jackie threw up her hands. “You’re working for my mom, remember? What if you told her about it? What if, God forbid, you were to hand it over to her? That would be a disaster for everyone.”
“She’d create her own singularity?”
Jackie snorted. “Hardly. She likes the world just the way it is. But if the legends are accurate, there’s a lot of knowledge contained in that book—enough to make her the most powerful practitioner in the world. Has she approached you yet with her song and dance about changing practitioner society—using logic and persuasion?”
“She did mention something about that.”
“I’ll bet. Well, that’s not her style. She’s got other agendas, and if she ever got the book, you’d find out soon enough what she’s really about. You wouldn’t be pleased, believe me.”
“Wouldn’t the first book have been enough for her? To do what she wants?”
“Not her. She has bigger plans. Besides, she doesn’t have it anymore. That’s why I wiped her computer files and destroyed the original book. Why do you think she’s been so anxious to find me?”
“But you gave it back,” I said.
“Yes, but with some key pages missing. She won’t realize that for a while.”
She waved her hand at the room we sat in. “And the book is useful, incredible, in fact. But compared to the second book—well, it’s the difference between a collection of folk songs and a Mozart symphony.”
“I see. So you want to get your hands on the second volume and now you think you know where it is?”
“Yes,” Malcolm said. “It’s hidden away, but now I know its location. And we need to find it.”
That was fine by me, not that I was going to let them keep it. But getting hold of the book was a good idea—if the second book was that dangerous, it wouldn’t be smart to leave it lying around. The next person who came along to pick it up might not be as responsible as me. And there would be a next person. There always is.
“One thing puzzles me,” I said. “You found out where this book is pretty easily. So it’s common knowledge, or at least not a mystery to anyone. This little world has practitioners in it. So why hasn’t someone scooped it up already?” Malcolm gave a faint smile.
“I was wondering if you’d catch that. Well, it seems that the location isn’t the main issue. It’s the other obstacle.”
“Which is?”
“There are guardians.”
TWELVE
ON OUR WAY TO THE HIDING PLACE, WE PASSED fields of what Malcolm said were wheat and barley, with insects buzzing a pleasant chorus that made me want to stretch out and take a nap. Plenty of insects, but no biting flies and no mosquitoes. Richter’s world might not be totally consistent, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Jackie chatted easily with me, acting as if the night before had never happened. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to remember any of it, not even the parts that I did. Malcolm pointed out various things of interest, playing tour guide.
“Remember I told you Richter was friends with Jacob Grimm?” he said.
“What of it?”
“No one seems to know what’s guarding the book. But given the fairy-tale aspect of this place, it might well be ogres or trolls or something else from folklore.”
“Even a witch,” Jackie said. “I don’t mean a Wiccan; I mean a broomstick type.”
“That, we could handle. A witch is just a type of practitioner when you get right down to it. Has anyone ever seen anything?”
“No,” said Malcolm, “but that’s not surprising. There are plenty of stories about those who have gone to collect the book, but no stories of those who returned. I don’t think there have been any. I think whatever is guarding the book will turn out to be powerful and unusual. Richter was no simpleton.”
After an hour without seeing anyone, we passed a big barn close to the road. A guy on the roof was hammering nails, but the sound was out of sync with the motion of his arm, as if he were a mile away. We were getting close to the singularity edge. As we crested a small rise, I looked into the distance and saw mountains, and they had the telltale blurring that indicates the limit of a singularity. Out on the edges, singularities start to unravel, losing internal integrity. Which also meant we were near where we needed to be, since we couldn’t go much farther.
By this time the fields to the east had been supplanted by rolling woods, which grew thicker the longer we walked. About a quarter mile past the barn a path angled off into the woods. The day was bright and sunny, but the woods were dark and tangled, with trees that had grown into fantastical shapes, taller than trees should be. Fairy-tale woods. Out here on the fringes, reality was thinner.
Lou looked at the path leading off into the woods and immediately sat down. Not a good idea to go in there, he was telling me, as if I needed to be told.
“It’s exactly the way it was described to me,” said Malcolm. “This path leads into the heart of the woods, and then there’s something in the middle. That’s where the book is.”
“Something?” I asked.
“Since no one who went into those woods ever came back out, no one could tell me exactly what’s in there. A house, maybe. A cave. A hollow tree. Something.”
I looked down the path leading into the dark forest. More fairy-tale lore. But what had seemed like a reasonable idea back at the inn didn’t seem so attractive now. Jackie wasn’t put off, however. She stood impatiently, shifting her weight back and forth from one leg to the other.
“Well?” she said. I shrugged.
“Why not? We’ve come this far. Come on, Lou.”
I took a few steps along the path and looked back. Lou hadn’t budged from his spot.
“Really?” I said. “That bad?” He got up and walked ever so slowly to where I stood. He wasn’t refusing; he was just making a point.
He took the lead, though. He clearly felt safer up front, no doubt figuring that the rest of us were liable to blunder into trouble that he could easily avoid. The trees crowded in closely, their bases covered with wet moss and their branches drooping over the path. No squirrels ran along these branches and no birds sang. A Grimm forest, to be sure. I’d half expected a long trek with uncanny creatures around every bend, but apart from the creepy atmosphere, nothing. And it couldn’t have been more than an hour before a small clearing appeared, and in the middle, a house.
And not just any house. It was small, neatly constructed of stone and wood, looking very much like the illustrations I’d seen as a kid in the “Hansel and Gretel” story, except it wasn’t made of candy and cake. A small window overlooked the area in front of the house. A plot of smooth, fine sand spread out from the front door, looking as if it had been carefully raked over and over until it was perfectly even. No footprints of any kind. Maybe Jackie had been right; maybe a grotesque witch would be appearing at any moment from around the corner, hovering on her broom.
“That’s where the book must be,” said Malcolm.
“You think?” Malcolm took a step forward. “Hold on,” I said. “No one has come back from here, remember? Let’s just cool it until we figure out what we’re up against.”
Nothing was visible, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything there. Lou stared fixedly at one corner of the house, then slowly turned his head as if following something moving across from one side to the other. Jackie noticed what he was doing.
“He sees something,” she said.
“I would guess it’s not a welcoming committee. Or if it is, it’s the wrong kind of welcome.”
“What is it?” asked Malcolm.
“I don’t know,” Jackie said. “But maybe I can find out.”
She pointed in the direction of Lou’s gaze and gestured subtly, too quickly for me to follow. At the same time, she sang two musical phrases, one up a Dorian scale, the other what I recognized as a Lochrian in the same key, but descending. Very elegant. Her method of spellwork made sense; like me, she was a musician after all.
A wave of pale violet rolled out from her fingertips and splashed against the front of the house, making it waver like a heat mirage. Nothing else happened; either she’d missed her target or it hadn’t had any effect. She bit her lip unconsciously, disappointed and a little surprised. I had a feeling her spells did not fail very often.
“You must have missed whatever it is,” said Malcolm.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. That was a broad energy wave—anything near the house should have been affected.”
Lou was still watching closely, following what we couldn’t see, so it was still there.
“Magical beings can be tricky,” I said. “I’ve had some experience with them—being magical themselves, or sometimes created out of magic, they’re often immune to the use of talent. Like Ifrits, but even more so. And if these are creations of Richter’s, there’s a good chance nothing we do will affect them.”
“How do we get past them, then?” Malcolm asked. “We can’t see them. We don’t even know what they are.”
“Talent may not affect them, but use of talent will.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, let me try something.”
I wandered off the path, looking for just the right sort of tree—something like a maple or some type of conifer. I found a huge scarred pine tree not too far away, perfect for what I had in mind. I looked around for a rock to scrape off the bark. Jackie had followed me and saw what I was trying to do.
“Here,” she said, offering me a sturdy hunting knife.
“You always carry one of those?” I asked.
“Always. You never know.”
I scored the tree trunk with several long cuts, and waited for the resin to seep out. When it did, I gathered the essence of its stickiness, amplified it, and wrapped it up into a neat package.
“Now the sand in front of the house,” I said. “Malcolm, can you break it up, make it finer?” He looked uncomfortable.
“Uh, I’m actually more a theoretician than an implementer.”
“Jackie?” I said.
“Maybe. It might take me a while, though. I don’t have anything handy for something like that.”
Most practitioners aren’t improvisers, so that was no surprise. Coming up with a spell to transform sand grains into even finer grains doesn’t occur to them when preparing an arsenal of potentially useful spells.
“How about weather? Can you whip up a windstorm?”
Her face brightened. “Oh, sure. I’m good at that, if I do say so. I can even pull off a minor whirlwind, like a dirt devil.”
“Perfect,” I said. “We won’t even need to mess with changing the sand.”
She sat cross-legged with her back to a tree and prepared herself. I got the feeling she hadn’t been in a lot of dicey situations before—no matter how strong you are or how good your spells may be, if you need to sit cross-legged and close your eyes before you can implement them, you’re going to be in trouble.
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